Nvidia soft-launches the GeForce GTX 1060, coming later this month for $249

If you've been following the leaks and rumors over the past week, today's announcement won't reveal much that you don't already know. In short, Nvidia has announced the new mid-range GeForce GTX 1060 which brings "the power of a GTX 980" to every gamer, their words not ours.

We have a GeForce GTX 1060 on hand, but we can't reveal any performance information just yet, so look for full benchmarks and analysis in the coming weeks. What we can tell you is the card's specifications: 1280 CUDA cores, a boost clock up to 1.7 GHz, 6 GB of GDDR5 memory at 8 Gbps, and a single 6-pin PCIe power connector to serve the card's 120W TDP.

Considering the GTX 980 was a 165W card, cutting power consumption by 27 percent for the same performance is a decent achievement, if we take Nvidia's statements on face value. However, with half the CUDA cores of Nvidia's GTX 1080 flagship thanks to a new GP106 GPU, this evidently won't be the graphics card you want for 4K gaming.

As expected, the GTX 1060 will start $249 which places it in firm competition with the Radeon RX 480, a card that retails for $200-240. On average, the GTX 980 is around 11 percent faster than the RX 480, so if Nvidia's performance claims are accurate, the GTX 1060 will be around the same cost per frame as the RX 480.

Like the GTX 1070 and 1080, there will also be a Founders Edition GTX 1060 (pictured above) that will cost $299. This will be available alongside partner cards at launch, with similar benefits to other Founders Edition products.

You'll be able to grab a GTX 1060 on July 19th, although most GPU launches this year have seen demand far outstrip supply at launch. Hopefully that won't be the case with the GTX 1060.

If you were thinking of purchasing a Radeon RX 480 any time soon, it might be worth holding off until GTX 1060 reviews are published. It shouldn't be too long before we can start to discuss exactly how this card performs in games, so stay tuned.